Levine Museum of the New South currently benefits from two Knight Foundation grants.  One provides major underwriting of the exhibit Changing Places: From Black & White to Technicolor which explores Charlotte’s new diversity.  The other is helping the Museum re-imagine COURAGE: The Carolina Story that Changed America, an exhibit on Civil Rights and education which the Museum developed in 2004, toured nationally, and will re-install in 2011.

Changing Places continues to draw unexpected synergies – a major reason why Levine Museum extended its run through November 2010.  In July Central Piedmont Community College ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher Kendal Walters made Changing Places a major class focus.  Students spent two hours in the exhibit talking about its themes, then prepared written reactions.  Students saw their lives reflected in the gallery: “I like Solange[‘s] story because is as my story. I want to become a doctor but I can’t speak, write and understand English. Sometimes I use my body to say something (do the gestures). I can’t be free, give my opinion, just because I don’t know English.”  Instructor Walters gave Levine Museum the lesson plan she prepared, and the Museum gave her DVDs of the exhibit videos which she plans to use as a regular tool in future classes.

COURAGE preparations are in a “community listening” phase as Education Vice President Janeen Bryant and Executive Director Emily Zimmern plan programs for 2011. They are meeting with opinion leaders on issues of race, ethnicity, law and education – including Civil Rights attorney James Ferguson, Latino judge Alberto Diaz, and Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools’ Chief Academic Officer Ann Clark – to ask how the exhibit can stimulate discussion of issues that the Charlotte region needs to face today.  Plans are now firm for a pre-opening “Dessert & Dialog” evening with Clark and noted University of North Carolina professor Jim Johnson engaging Museum donors and Board members in discussion of CMS education challenges, and for a January 20th opening event featuring NPR/Fox News public policy analyst Juan Williams.